SALON

Monday, Jul 12, 2010 3:13 PM UTC

Roll your own apps

Google's Android "App Inventor" tries to bring mobile programming to the masses

By

Topics: Android,

Roll your own apps

UPDATED

Back in the 1980s, Apple Computer (as it was known then) released a product called Hypercard. It was an easy-to-use programming tool, based on a simple and elegant programming language called HyperTalk, combining databases and a graphical display to create applications called “stacks.” Programmers and non-programmers alike flocked to it, and created a huge variety of stacks that ranged from useful to quirky.

In the 1990s, Microsoft released Visual Basic. It, too, greatly simplified the programming process and was adopted by vast numbers of people — many inside large enterprises — whose work reinforced the Windows monopoly.

In the past decade, Web development took on some of the same qualities, giving average people ways to create applications to run on the Web with great ease and simplicity. Blogger, WordPress and Drupal, among others, became the content-management systems of choice, for example, and Yahoo’s brilliant Pipes let people do sophisticated mashups without knowing a line of Java or other popular languages.

Now comes a tool from Google that is getting quick buzz. It seems more in the Hypercard/Blogger genre than Visual Basic, which was made for beginners but did take some skill, but nonetheless a possible breakthrough. This one, built for the mobile age, is called the Android App Inventor. I haven’t been able to try it yet, but its description suggests great potential. Google says:

You can build just about any app you can imagine with App Inventor. Often people begin by building games like WhackAMole or games that let you draw funny pictures on your friend’s faces. You can even make use of the phone’s sensors to move a ball through a maze based on tilting the phone.

But app building is not limited to simple games. You can also build apps that inform and educate. You can create a quiz app to help you and your classmates study for a test. With Android’s text-to-speech capabilities, you can even have the phone ask the questions aloud.

To use App Inventor, you do not need to be a developer. App Inventor requires NO programming knowledge. This is because instead of writing code, you visually design the way the app looks and use blocks to specify the app’s behavior.

Based on the work of a number of people including Hal Abelson at MIT — a brilliant computer scientist who also understands how app development need to get into wider distribution, not just the coder community — the open-source environment leverages of other educational software projects.

One of the most important elements of App Inventor is that it will let developers take full advantage of the mobile hardware. Part of what makes mobility so interesting is that sensors built into devices — compasses, GPS radios, accelerometers, for example — add  capabilities that were unavailable in the PC era. To be able to leverage those in a dead-simple way is just huge.

I don’t want to overstate the potential here. Google’s not alone in working on such things, no doubt. But from what I can see this is going to be a seriously big deal if it works as advertised.

And I’ll be shocked if Apple doesn’t do something equivalent for its iPhone ecosystem. (It will have to be Apple, because the company forbids app developers to use any tools but its own — one of the most arrogant yet ultimately foolish moves Apple has made to date.) (See the update below for some high irony.)

The downside, if there is one: The number of Android apps is about to explode. This is a giant opportunity for Google — or anyone else, for that matter — to offer better curation than the current Market via various marketplaces and recommendation systems, as well as simple aggregation. Help the users. Don’t control them.

I’m going to start working on an app for the journalism marketplace, a project I’ve wanted to do but couldn’t get going with because of the cost. From what I can tell, I’ll be able to do most of what I need with this tool, maybe not everything but enough to get going and then iterate later.

UPDATE: One of the building blocks for App Inventor happens to be Scratch, a programming language aimed at kids and developed at MIT. One guess what happened when the developers of Scratch submitted a version they’d created for the iPhone platform to the Apple App Store: Yep, Apple rejected it.

(Note: Google has supplied some of its early Android phones, the G1 model, to my university for experiments. Many other companies, including Google rivals Apple and Microsoft, have supplied gear and/or software, and offer discounts to university students, faculty and staff.  I purchased (at list price) the Google Nexus One phone that is my main mobile device.)

A longtime participant in the tech and media worlds, Dan Gillmor is director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurshipat Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication. Follow Dan on Twitter. More about Dan here.

A longtime participant in the tech and media worlds, Dan Gillmor is director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication. Follow Dan on Twitter: @dangillmor. More about Dan here. More Dan Gillmor.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 9 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations